PIB TrackerBRICS justice ministers adopt declaration on ADR
Under India's 2026 BRICS Chairship, justice ministers pledge to expand mediation and arbitration as alternatives to litigation.
What happened
- The Justice Ministers of the BRICS countries adopted the Declaration of the Ministers of Justice of the BRICS Countries on Strengthening Alternative Dispute Resolution through Capacity Building in Mediation and Arbitration on 21 May 2026.
- The ministerial meeting was held at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, hosted by the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice, under India's BRICS 2026 Chairship.
- The text was finalised by senior officials at a Senior Officials' Meeting on 19–20 May 2026 before being elevated to the ministerial level for adoption.
- Ministers or representatives from ten BRICS members — Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates — participated.
- The Declaration commits members to strengthen institutional mediation and arbitration so that dispute resolution becomes more accessible, efficient and enforceable, and to build capacity among legal professionals.
- It is positioned as a contribution to reducing the burden on courts and to creating a stable, predictable environment for cross-border trade and investment among member economies.
Background & context
A "Declaration" of this kind is not a binding treaty; it is a political and policy statement of shared intent adopted by ministers of a grouping. It signals an agreed direction — here, a common push to develop Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) systems across member states — without creating enforceable obligations the way a ratified convention would. This matters for placing the news correctly: the outcome is a co-operation framework and a statement of priorities for the legal sector, harvested as one of the deliverables of India's chairship year.
ADR is the umbrella term for methods of resolving disputes outside ordinary court litigation. Its principal limbs are arbitration (a neutral arbitrator or tribunal hears the parties and issues a binding award), mediation (a neutral third party helps the disputants negotiate their own voluntary settlement — the mediator does not impose a decision), conciliation and negotiation. The Declaration's focus is narrowed to the two limbs named in its title: mediation and arbitration. In India these are governed principally by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and the Mediation Act, 2023, the latter being India's first dedicated statute to give mediated settlement agreements binding, enforceable status. India also hosts an institutional ecosystem for this — including the India International Arbitration Centre (IIAC), established under a 2019 Act — which gives the chairship its credibility on this theme.
BRICS itself is the relevant parent grouping. The acronym originally stood for Brazil, Russia, India, China (the "BRIC" coinage dates to 2001 as an investment-bank label for fast-growing economies); the first leaders' summit was held in 2009 at Yekaterinburg, Russia. South Africa joined in 2010, turning BRIC into BRICS. The grouping has no permanent secretariat and no founding charter; it works through an annual rotating chairship, leaders' summits, and ministerial and working-group tracks. Its two standing institutions are the New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai, and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), a currency-swap safety net. From 1 January 2024 the bloc enlarged in a major expansion, taking in new members — reflected in the ten-country participant list at Gandhinagar, which includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia and the UAE alongside the five original members. India holds the rotating chairship for 2026, and the ADR Declaration is one of the legal-sector outcomes produced under that chairship.
The justice-ministers' track is one of several thematic streams India is running through its chairship year. A sibling deliverable the same day was the conclusion of the BRICS Youth Entrepreneurship Working Group meeting at Indore (Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports), illustrating how the chairship spreads across ministries and host cities rather than living only in summit diplomacy. The annual chairship rotates among members; whichever country holds it sets the year's calendar of summits, ministerial meetings and working groups and stewards the bloc's outcomes — which is why a legal-sector declaration on dispute resolution surfaces as an India-branded deliverable in 2026.
This BRICS legal track can be set against how a comparable grouping handles the same theme. The G20, which India chaired in 2023, also produces ministerial declarations, but it carries no standing development bank of its own and operates as a forum for the world's largest economies including several Western powers; BRICS, by contrast, presents itself as a platform of major non-Western and emerging economies, with the NDB and CRA giving it a financial architecture the G20 lacks. Reading the ADR Declaration against that backdrop shows BRICS extending its co-operation from finance and trade into the institutional plumbing of commercial justice — the rules and forums through which disputes between firms across member states are actually resolved.
On enforceability, arbitration draws strength from the long-standing New York Convention of 1958 (the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards), to which India and the other major members are parties; it is the reason an arbitral award rendered in one country can be enforced in another. Mediation has a younger counterpart in the Singapore Convention on Mediation (2019), which provides a framework for enforcing international settlement agreements reached through mediation; India is a signatory. The Declaration's stress on making ADR outcomes "enforceable" sits squarely within this larger movement to give negotiated and arbitrated outcomes the same cross-border bite that court judgments struggle to achieve.
For Prelims
- Instrument: Declaration of the BRICS Ministers of Justice on Strengthening ADR through Capacity Building in Mediation and Arbitration — a political declaration, not a binding treaty.
- Adopted: 21 May 2026, Gandhinagar, Gujarat · finalised by the Senior Officials' Meeting of 19–20 May 2026.
- Indian nodal body: Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice.
- India's status: BRICS Chair for 2026 (the rotating annual chairship).
- Ten participants named: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates.
- Substance: capacity building for Government Legal Officers, Mediators, Arbitrators, Judges and Legal Professionals; institutional ADR reforms for accessibility, efficiency and enforceability; knowledge-sharing including digital tools.
- Stated goals: reduce the burden on courts; foster a stable environment for trade and investment.
- BRICS lineage: BRIC label coined 2001 · first summit 2009 (Yekaterinburg) · South Africa added 2010 → BRICS · major enlargement effective 1 January 2024 · no permanent secretariat · standing institutions = New Development Bank (HQ Shanghai) and Contingent Reserve Arrangement.
- ADR in Indian law: Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 · Mediation Act, 2023 · India International Arbitration Centre (under the 2019 Act).
- What it is NOT: it is not a binding international convention or treaty, and it does not create a new BRICS court or arbitration institution; it is a ministerial statement of intent. Mediation is also not the same as arbitration — in mediation the neutral does not impose a decision; in arbitration the arbitrator issues a binding award. ADR more broadly is not limited to these two: it also covers conciliation and negotiation, which the Declaration's title does not name.
Why it matters
The problem the Declaration addresses is structural. Cross-border commerce among large, geographically dispersed economies generates disputes whose resolution through ordinary national courts can be slow, costly and unpredictable — and litigants are often reluctant to submit to a counterparty's home courts. A shared commitment to mediation and arbitration offers a route around this: arbitration gives parties a neutral, enforceable forum of their own choosing, while mediation offers a faster, relationship-preserving settlement. By agreeing to build capacity and harmonise institutional reforms, members aim to make ADR outcomes more predictable and enforceable across borders, which directly serves the bloc's stated objective of a stable environment for trade and investment.
For India specifically, the theme aligns with a domestic priority: easing the pendency burden on the judiciary, where ADR is promoted precisely to keep commercial and civil disputes out of overloaded courts. Hosting this outcome under the chairship lets India project its own ADR reforms — the Mediation Act, 2023 and the India International Arbitration Centre — as a template, and positions New Delhi as a credible hub for international arbitration in competition with established seats. The capacity-building emphasis (training judges, legal officers, mediators and arbitrators, with digital tools) is the mechanism through which a non-binding declaration is meant to translate into actual institutional change rather than remaining a paper commitment.